The effect of local prosodic structure on Danish glottal stop epenthesis

This study investigates the effect of local prosodic structure on word-initial glottal stop epenthesis (GSE) in Danish. In many languages, GSE occurs phrase-medially before stressed vowels, though less is known about GSE in languages with a phonological phonation contrast (Alber, 2001; Garellek, 2013). To this end, unstressed, stressed modal, and stressed creaky (stød) vowels were elicited word-initially after unstressed, stressed modal, and stressed creaky syllables in Danish, a language with a phonological modal/creaky phonation contrast in stressed syllables only (Fischer-Jørgensen, 1987). The results show that compared to the overall average, GSE occurs more frequently before stressed vowel-initial words and less frequently after unstressed syllables. Post hoc comparisons further revealed that GSE occurs most frequently between adjacent stressed syllables (stress clashes) separated by a word boundary and least frequently between unstressed syllables (lapses). Interestingly, no differences in GSE rates were found based on the phonation type of the preceding syllable, despite the fact that phonologically creaky syllables themselves may condition word-final glottal stops, or the phonation type vowel-initial word itself. These results indicate that, in addition to the stress of the vowel-initial word, the prominence of the adjacent syllable also plays a significant role in GSE, though phonological phonation type does not.